Is someone as biased as Trevor Phillips the right person to chair the EHRC?

Reading Trevor Phillips comments in the Sunday Telegraph last week did something to my blood! The man is clearly biased and his arguments are based primarily on supposition.

He accuses Christians of being politically motivated citing homosexuality as some sort of contrived battle-ground to pick a fight. On the whole, he rejects any notion of Christians being persecuted, regardless of the fact that in recent years, it is Christians, and not other faiths that have found themselves in the dock over such issues. He says:

“I think there’s an awful lot of noise about the Church being persecuted but there is a more real issue that the conventional churches face that the people who are really driving their revival and success believe in an old time religion which in my view is incompatible with a modern, multi-ethnic, multicultural society.

By contrast he observes:

“Muslim communities in this country are doing their damnedest to try to come to terms with their neighbours to try to integrate and they’re doing their best to try to develop an idea of Islam that is compatible with living in a modern liberal democracy.”

Is there any real wonder that Christians cannot get a fair hearing today? There is also a veiled warning in there about charitable status of churches in the future:

The quid pro quo for standing up for individual believers is that churches and faith groups have to fall into line with the views of wider society to keep their charitable status, Mr Phillips signalled.

“Churches, mosques, temples, religious organisations of all kinds now have to some extent protection under the law but they also have to obey the law including anti-discrimination law because they are charities, because they offer a public service,” he said.